Bowie's "Toy" hits BitTorrent

Posted March 25, 2011 - 10:47
by
Tirsina Radu

David Bowie's unreleased album "Toy" is an enigma no more thanks to a diehard fan and BitTorrent.

Unsurprisingly, the UK-based Sun intimated Bowie went ballistic upon learning of the leak. Of course, Bowie's negative reaction stands in stark contrast to the joyful celebration of his fans who found it difficult to hide their delight at laying hands on the album.

Words such as "a dream," "heavenly" and "magical" are being used with near reckless abandon on sites discussing "Toy."

"Toy" has been lurking in the shadows since the middle of 2001, when a disagreement with Virgin saw its expected release fail to materialize.

The one hour recording - 14 tracks in all - was uploaded to the little known tracker, Mind Warp Pavilion.

This is somewhat uncharacteristic given that the leak of such an anticipated album would usually be headed for torrent sites with a huge audience like The Pirate Bay.

The album's original uploader goes by the online nickname Brigstow which is a word play on where he comes from - Bristol, UK.

Brigstow's reasons for uploading "Toy" sound just as unconventional as the site he chose to upload the album on. He wanted to put a stop to what he considered gross exploitation from eBay sellers that were posting "Toy" album CDs for auction starting at as much as $55 per piece.

Brigstow stated categorically that the upload was based on a bootleg CD he bought, although initial rumors had stated the unknown uploader had bought the CD from Australia via eBay.

He is also not a newbie to BitTorrent given that he used to run his own tracker known as Savage Jaw not too many years ago. Savage Jaw was a dedicated David Bowie tracker that concentrated primarily on quality bootlegs and the musician's rarer recordings.